


Sweeps of Alternia

by tomattokun



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomattokun/pseuds/tomattokun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tales of Alternia -- stories that shoot and stumble across the land and tell of its residents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Midbloods

**Author's Note:**

> Stories I wrote a few years ago. Not beta'd.

If one were to turn a ways to the west of the southernmost point of Alternia and start walking at nightfall, straight ahead, stopping right at the foot of the wall of mountains that line the south, one would find oneself on a trodden little pathway leading straight through the firs by dawn. If they followed it for about half a mile, they would arrive at the outskirts of a small hidden town crammed with all kinds of wandering troubadours and fugitives as one might expect to find in the rundown urbans of the desolate western forests, a town whose savage bounty of foliage shrouded the apparent life that dwelled within its surface. Each day, as the moon felled its beacon the streets became bustling, yet seemed to hush themselves almost immediately for fear of being discovered. Shouts hurling across the street like unraveling spools of thread that tied each passerby together, navigating with the celerity of the wind whistling and rushing beneath every crack and lifting every strand of hair, in the sky, the gradual moonlight rode the roofs of the buildings and transformed rudimentary brick and stone into a bursting town of light, an unhealthy compromise of dull and enriching. While most of the buildings that bunched together in the center of this town were either abandoned completely or shelter to bypassed dubiousness, easily ignored by the din in the corner of the street was a stoutly filthy building, a pocket of discourteous honesty . It was a shelter of sorts to the people -- a shelter of thoughts, to keep them safe and well-fed in their own tiny glasses until the next day, when they were fished out and stuffed back into heavy hearts. The deep smell of smoke permeated the room like the lazy exhalations of a beast, creeping into all visible cracks and crumbling the walls. The blinding glints of metallic unsettledness, the bright things that flashed like silver, shone through the suffocation, tickling eyesights, forcing everyone into short winces and long blinks. Patrons were carelessly strewn across the tables, spewing sordid garbage from their hoarsening throats like no tomorrow, pouring their hearts out like yesterday’s rainwater. A man could be found every sunset occupying the one stool at the corner of the bar that creaked curiously every time anything of tangible mass was placed upon it. The name that this man held was Zahhak -- Equius Zahhak, as he would begrudgingly reply if anyone were to ask. No one quite knew this name, however, as each day he sat alone , two seats down from next person and taking up nearly three himself, speaking only to the bartender. His casual presence insisted he wasn’t a newcomer. Despite this, no one quite knew who was but his faithful bartender, on whom he would dump his worries, as long as he had nothing to lose from it. Seen by any and all who passed, his size was not be taken lightly. His broad shoulders stooped, as if from some massive weight that forever pushed him down. His posture was further jointed by the very location he chose to hold, which was compressed by the ceiling, uncomfortably, painfully low, steeping from the center beam in untrustworthy panels of eaten wood, forcing him to duck his neck from his already cramped seat in the corner, the rancid ache already creeping up his spine. Remaining nonetheless, here he came every day as he woke, not to splurge and rot, but to spill a little secret with a clear head, to whine and complain a bit about his petty issues afore his day began. It was a source of satisfaction -- mirth, after all, was expensive, only available to those who could pay for it with their time, only for those who had time to spare. As for those who couldn’t, they could come here, as if with every phrase leaked, the empty space would fill in the world’s endless supply of spare vitality.

“Yeah, nobles," he scoffed to the red-hearted bartendress, continuing his tale from where he had left off before a gruff and violent yawn a drink ago. “I respected them. Did everything they asked, too. I help a greenblooded girl and I’m in a bar inland, thinking about the past," As he complained, the bony girl listening wrung the dry hem of her skirt, saturninely, inadvertently, as if expecting to squeeze out blood.

“What do you do now?” She asked it with her raspy voice, turning to look at him with her ink-darkened eyes, bags under them red and blue enough to sink to her mottled cheeks.

“Machinery. It pays well, most of the time.” His benefactress nodded her head in hardly-felt sympathy, for she’d contracted as many distressing tales in this bar as the number of glass shards on the floor behind her, born from her own shaky wrists. She slithered to the other side of the counter, wavering like a stale reed in the open breeze, swaying in the dim cacophony. Her rather delayed movements were of a quick, hasty, slovenly sort, equally messy limbs waving about in careless motions, yet snatching up cups and plates handily, like an old machine that didn’t seem to be working quite right. She laughed and chugged like a clogged-up harmonica, wheezy and impatient. He didn’t take a pause, and he didn’t remember her face. Truth to be told, he didn’t remember anything from that sweep, nor the sweep before that, nor the sweeps before, save the stale taste of them. He didn’t want want to recall his old hive, which towered up, stretching into the clouds, sturdy as his position amongst the Archeradicators. So it seemed, at least. He reckoned he could remember if he truly wanted to. Alas he frequented this place, lest he would. The wood of the counter splintered silently under his fist like rotten tuber paste. Through the din he heard the door opening and closing, felt the raucous vibrations it sent through the ground. Someone sat down in the empty seat next to him with a remarkably regal perch.

“Hey”. He looked up beside him into the ever-spiteful glare of Vriska Serket, the fearless pride of the ceruleans, a cold-blooded mercenary of notoriety. Her eyes burned with the fire of a loaded pistol; in her was the vast gift of insularity, innately carried by all of her caliber. “I’ve been looking for you”. She waved off the eager bartender, who had lurched in for a coin and order. Vriska’s unkempt hair stood up, as if the strands had been streaked with rain, then frozen in the moistureless air outside. They curled outside her head, the tendrils of a spider. Her form was full and tall, adequate meat and muscle on her bones. Despite her grand build, her horns whispered her tender age of 30 sweeps. From shoulder to ankle, under her fine tweed jacket, were stained bandages, trophies of battle, as daily eyes would grow accustomed to beholding. As she shifted herself, closing her eyes a second too lengthily in her blinks, the truth became more evident by each impatient hum. Her left hand clutched, none too deliberately, the fresh cerulean that bloomed in her right side, where her patched eye was dripping blue, an in the darkness her form lacked a solid limb under the limp sleeve of her shoulder. He knew well enough not to stare, turning back around. She turned away as well, posture straight with a small disgusted look. He scowled (he was usually scowling, anyway) straight forward like a stone while she started to speak, her tongue forward in her carefully colored lips. “Don’t you have business to take care of?” She said coldly, her timbre rising and descending with the irregular syllables in her condescending accent, words becoming one in the bitter, yet sugary hiemal fluidity of her tone. She laughed, the notes arcing through the warm air like short blasts of frigid, ragged wind, punctuated by blind dots of suppressed coughing. She cleared her throat to continue. “ Equius, I have a request. Come take a walk with me”. He complied, although ponderously as she took the liberty of walking in front. His boots dug into the numb wood beneath him as he shot biting glances at the shriveled castaways, taunting, blastering in their heated frenzies around him. The outside was still bright, calmingly empty. The grooves inside the cobblestone were still filled with old rain, over the brims and into toe-deep puddles. The drip-drops off the awnings echoed in a dearly rhythmic way, setting a tempo to the day as it went on. It was a moment after when she finally spoke again. “Zahhak, I need a favor.” She had paused in her words, as if taking a last moment to consider her decision. “I’ll need a prosthetic to replace a dearly lost appendage. My arm, as you can see." An unintentional touch of coercion slipped out in her own callous way, drawing her ending note to a sudden stop. “How much will you need?” He responded with a grim, offended look. “Would really really pass up an opportunity to redeem yourself? I can find any other blacksmith in town, Zahhak. Do you learn, or give up. Frankly I’m fine either way," This ellicted a sigh.

“Consider it a debt repaid.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Equius.” Vriska stood behind him, looming, almost. He thanked the Noble Circle that she was silent. Creak. Scrape. Buzz. He worked assiduously with the tools, straining his eyes and caressing the metal like the soft shell of a wriggler. The highlights of the soft light above him grazed and sheened the unscratched surface of the layers of machinery. The woman behind him watched intently at the metallic plates, watched them bend and move together as if a million parts of a life-pumping body. She curled the fingers of her remaining hand in synchronization with the silver one on the table. “You ought to have learned this somewhere.” Her curiosity got the best of her. He made a morose sort of grunting sound, interrupted in his work.

“It was a mere hobby. Call it a small passion from my wriggling days.” A short breath before stopping herself. She shook her head, flicked her hand as if clearing a trance, a pestering flygrub, and turned to the door.

“Goodbye, Equius”. She gathered her jacket and he heard the hive open, felt the air blast in in a harsh exhale. “I’ll be sailing by this time tomorrow, and I’ll be back in in two days time. I expect it done by this week. Leave it at my hive once you’re finished.”

 

The Eastern forests had been unreasonably warm that sweep. The long sleeves, coats and frills of the West could hardly stand against the heavy, grassy air between the grand trees of mid-blooded domain -- a tranquil place with a tranquil spirit. A haze of sleep drifted about the forest, saturating the octaves of color further forby their surreal vibrancy. Air seemed to spiral upward here, traveling up the tree trunks, the tender statues of warmth, and ruffling the leaves in soothingly tame embrace. As the leaves fell, they caught the gaze of the moon, fluttering to the grass like fairies dancing in secrecy. Nonexistent images were carved into the flora by the dim amber light that shone through the windows of a modest hive nestled behind the arms of a stately old perseleaf. Vriska didn’t bother knocking at the door of the respiteblock in front of her. Small leaves blew in as she emerged in the horrendous display of color that was Terezi Pyrope’s hive. The owner was present, as expected, a silhouette standing with her back to the door, her loose weight nonchalantly leaned on her left foot, skinny as the length of the cane in her hand; the only bumps of her body the joints that threatened to puncture her clothing.

“Nyurb gu'ilg -- it’s been sweeps, Serket.” The girl dressed in teal turned and performed a small curtsy coyly, mockingly, with a sharp smile. Groan. Vriska stared, unmoving, waiting as the other girl straightened and took a whiff into the air, which drifted with the raw scent of sap-filled wood.

“Cut it, Pyrope. Have you even thought of the future? What will you do next sweep, when they send the barge into your hive and threaten to break your pan in?” The blind girl did a broken-up, unsynchronized little wave, beckoning her former friend into the tiny breadth of the room.

“Believe me, I’ve thought of things”, she affirmed, twisted up like the unironed fabric on her shirt. “None of which will help us in such a situation.” She released an extravagant laugh, queenly laughter that resounded into the bark around her hive, off her delicate fingers, and back to her ears in a shaking fit, into a content hum that went on forever. Contently -- she did love her laughter, the coldness of it. She’d laugh forever if it meant laughing away the world, the world that’d refuse to leave.

“They’ve given us sweeps to decide -- sweeps to prepare. We’ve been getting too comfortable. I need answers.”

“I’d rather ask of you first, dear friend”, she said, sidestepping with sly hesitation. In calculated way, Terezi waltzed around the room, sweeping her guest in the manner of a snake facing her opponent. She wielded her cane a spear as she speaks, waving it about in eerie dance-like movements, brandishing it like the supposed words of her gods. “What have you been doing?”

“More than you and your worthless prayers. I ask, will the horrorterrors help us now?” With her accusation, she beckoned her counterpart to a giddy stop, a lapse of silence.

“G’riupnf, I warn you, Serket. Do not anger the Noble Circle.”

“I have yet to respect masters who do not care for their people.” It comes fluidly like a script.

“I came to the light, so to speak, for the gods of our world. Just as I cannot save you by asking you for the same, I cannot control your words, but I advise you heed my warning in the faces of others. They are not all as generous as I.”

“It doesn’t matter. This isn’t what I came to discuss. Your plan failed. They’ll find us in the South. They expect that.”

“They’ll certainly find us in the North as well. It’s their territory. There’s no where we can go, they’d recognize us anywhere.”

“For now. We’ll think of something, I’m certain.”

“Give me one reason why I should trust you.”

“You can’t control me, Pyrope. Remember that.”

“The sun is coming. You’d best be going.”

 

 A fledgling season passed and she returned.

“Pyrope. You know why I’m here.“ The smile faded, and the girl paused before slowly sitting down with her knees tucked together.

“It’s getting harder to run, now, isn’t it.”

“You tell me, Sister.”

“Unlawful murder. However trivial her death, it’s still on us.” The blind girl leaned back in her seat, sniffing under the cloth tied around her eyes. Her fingers danced on the edges of her chair.

“You know it better than I.” Vriska stood behind her casually, her back to her old friend, who continued to speak with a shrinking voice.

“We’ll stay here. We’ll stay and we’ll be culled.”

“I promise we won’t be.” Vriska made her way in front of a masked face, placing her boots firmly on the ground, halting in her stride to speak.

“Use your pan. We’re a tealblood and a blueblood. Truly, truly we can make it. You know the law, don’t you?” Terezi smirked crookedly, a pretty razor tooth cracking at the corner of her lip.

“A Legislacrator? My pleasure. What about you then?”

“You have better to do than worrying about what I’ll do. I always have luck, don’t I?” Terezi snorted in her laughter, louder more out than she ought to have.

"Luck? Alright then. You’ll take the place of some unsuspecting princess -- snatch her right off her feet and take her place? A Marquise and a Legislacerator, huh, Serket.” She tipped her head back in a wonderfully halfhearted, saturated version of a cackle, which died out before she took a breath and exhaled, shakily. “The future is changing, Serket. It could work.”

“It’s our only shot. We might as well take it.”

“What do we have to lose?” An invisible grin.

“I’m with you, Scourge Sister.”

“We’ll be leaving for the North in two rises of the moon. I promise won’t wait for you.”

“Knryip, g’lgirb jngn s’nirgm. I should hope not.”


	2. Highbloods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The royal kingdom.

Those days in Alternia had been warm, hazy red. A sickness had enveloped the Southern inland, eating away at the flesh of her land as the plagued body of an infected bark-beast. It was dying, for sure, bleeding the blood of her people. She was the queen, but she never was supposed to worry. Ruined her think-pan, he told her. Ruined herself by worryin’. He told her to watch. He, her moirail, the ambassador from water to land. He, the one who’d watched over her, cared for her. She just watched. She watched the people come in and leave one by one, beggarmen, dropping off problems like soiled rags. She nodded, frowned, and recited phrase when they looked, pleaded at her for a response. Her moirail was beside her while she stared ahead, hands folded in her lap, frigid as the horizon.

The paintings hung rigidly on the walls. On them were deadpan scenes, muted screams, she had examined near a trillion times. On the ceiling was carved an astounding masterpiece, the all seeing eye of Gl'bgolyb, peering over her seadwellers with her cryptic stare. Feferi made her way beyond the Eye, finding a tiny door in the winding halls of artificial glory, the castle. She focused on them anyway, her glances tucked behind her eyelashes. She could feel his hard stare like tiny rocks laid on her shoulders.

“Nyurb gu'ilg, Empress.”

“Nyurb gu'ilg. Buezdibbut, vira schlekt. Hello, Eridan”, she echoed. She turned to him with that smile, the one he despised, the one where the corners of her lips would curl, but the edges of eyes would stay sullen like unoiled clockwork. She knew that it would never fool him, but she did it anyway. Even when he looked away, and she could tell from his sighing profile that his smirk had faded, she couldn’t do anything about it. It was her job. It was her job and her habit.

“Fef?”, he called her by her crude nickname, the one he’d never utter in the presence of outsiders, with dull finality, smooth to the folds on his white shirt. “Really, what’s wrong, tell me.” His voice dropped considerably. It was him containing his darkness. She still found it, though. It was there on his cut, bruised fingers, and his words, which rose and fell like the nearby ocean they both adored, but feared to visit. He was her moirail, she was his, and she could lie.

“It’s just that – that they're are unhappy. The rebellions in the south? The sickness?” She knew he hadn’t cut her off mid-sentence only out of sheer respect, deference of her blood.

“Fef, you shouldn’t be worrin’ yourself about those land-dweller scum. Don’t be wastin’ your time. We are the ones She chose to join her in the sea, and you are the one She chose as Empress.” He said it with that trademark-sea-dweller wavering cadence, with a stagnant wince and a slight sneer. His syllables were pronounced, tweaked at the ends, and stammered.

“Besides, I’ll handle it. I always have.” She bit her lip. “Why don’t you get a little more sleep tonight? You’re seemin’ perigees more tired than usual.” Weary. It wasn’t only her. His words were sincere but his tongue was weather-beaten. His rushing intonation had changed from their days in the water. When she first heard that new, brittle rasp without a face strung on, she wanted to shiver, to wince, and to hide back into her memories and yearn for his other voice. But when turned around like she did, and she looked back into his eyes like she did then, she found his old eyes, his old cheeks, and she could feel herself softening again.

“Eridan”, she breathed with new alacrity, that name she said ostentatious, wispy and dreamy, with the subtle shade of strain and sleep in the throat from which it was articulated. “Oh, don’t you wish we could go back? Back to that town with the well and the stars? The theater? Don’t you want to?” Her accent flared in what some would describe as the singing of a mermaid and what others would say was the narrow, pitchy whine of a gutterblood's dying lusus. Even she couldn’t hide the desperation in those words, her rising inflection with the low notes missing, for even she did dream and she knew he did too. He took her hands in his, glove interlaced in glove, and looked into her wide eyes with sad ones. Both pairs carried dreams, and both dreams were already drowned by reality.

"You're going back again, aren't you. Back to town." Feferi dropped her smile, shattering it like glass.

"You knew? You knew and you didn't even say anyfin?”

“'M sorry Fef. But reely, you shouldn't be goin' out so easy."

"So easy! Glub! I hadn't gone out in sweeps! Who are you to tell m-e what's easy?"

"Calm down, calm down gill." He held her shoulders in his hands, firmly yet gently, like the shells of a clam. "'M sayin' 'm worryin' about you. You shouldn't be runnin' 'round so careless." Her voice was sandy when she replied,

"Careless, you say. Careless, some glubbin' landbeast manure."

"No Fef, you know that's not what I glubbin’ mean--."

"No Eridan, nothing! My cod, I'm twenty swe-eps, I'm not a wiggler anymore!" He stopped and rubbed his fins at their bases, closing his eyes.

“Shhh, I’m not sayin’ you are. Look, ‘m doin’ this for your own good. You’re the queen, but most of all, you’re my moirail. So please -- Fef. Feferi.” She stared, in a moment the sovereign ruler she was, was supposed to be. Eridan took a longest last look before turning away and disappearing around the corner of the hallway.

 

Her face felt raw and bare without the ink and paint she’d grown accustomed to. She could move her arms, and her toes could curl. She wrapped her hair in coils and coils, The strands slipping between her fingers like water, and entwining into a bun at her base of her neck. even so, locks tumbled free as she pulled up her hood to hide them. A scarf wrapped round her neck to hide the blood in her thin veins, thick gloves smothered the tiny webs between her fingers, and a long dress covered the fragile scale textures on her ankles. She locked the door behind her. The streets were bustling, fists being thrown in the air, legs kicking out to walk, and shouts hurling across the street like unraveling spools of thread. There she found a makeshift tapestry of thousands of fabrics of different textures, different colors, and different smells. There was a slight hover, a glide in her steps as she slipped inside, glancing up from the wide brim of her hood. She didn’t see him. She took a seat by the counter, where broken glass littered the ground and seats. She hunched her back. Around her was loudness – screeching, laughing, and bickering. Drinks were spilling, bodies were collapsing, and sleeves were falling from bony shoulders.

“Hey”. It was that voice. She turned around to find him. His hair was longer than she remembered, but still in an utter disarray, and frayed at the seemingly burnt ends, and his eyes were still glinting, dancing, the two opposing ends of the hemospectrum.

“Sollux?” She jumped up from her seat, turning to face a somewhat confused mustardblood with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s me, Feferi!” After a few suspenseful seconds, realization, with a spark of relief, broke across his face.

“Oh, it's you. Barely recognized you with that hood. So you remembered.” She giggled and sat down with him. “So what brings you here? Sellin’ a’ right?” She stammered a bit:

“F-fine. I’m fine. Selling like cheap grubloaf.” Deepen her rhythm, lengthen her syllables. Lowbloods.

“I still can’t get used to that voice a’yours. You sure you're not actually a noble -- chum-bucket, maybe?” He laughed throatily, tripping on his own notes. “You left in a hurry last time. Barely got to talk, eh?"  
"I have time now."  
"Alright. I suppose it's my turn to ask meaningless questions about what suits your fancy. Alight. What's your favorite color?”

“Well, all of them I suppose.”

“Even fuschia?” 

“And what’s wrong with fuschia?”

“Well nothing, but you know the queen.”

“What about her." Sollux ordered two pints before responding,

“You know what's ‘bout her. You know the queen.” She swallowed her words and gulped from the mug that’d been slid across to her. “Alright, fine, rainbow drinker.” She nodded and took a few more sips of the strange-smelling drink. It was exotic. New. She drained the cup and requested another.

“Alright. So tell me now. Tell me ‘bout you.” She said, colloquially, leaning in her seat. He drank from his mug.

“Information is precious. What do you want to know?”

Feferi flushed, and hid herself in the fabric of her cloak to hide the color. “Tell me ‘bout your quadrants.”

“Barren as boneth.”

“Ah, how unfort’nate.”

“You?”

“Pale. A moirail.”

“Trading partner?”

“More a’less”. She hiccuped.

“So you’ve never ‘ad a matesprit?”

“No, there was one.”

“A girl?”

“Yeah.” He took a drink. “Rustblooded, too. Bilgeblood at it’s finest. She’d fought for her position in a guild we were in together with a sh-tton of reject middle-classes. No one liked us around, but we stayed around like marchbugs around a corpse.” He swirled the liquid in his cup, glancing at the long straw-haired, curl-horned maroon-blood behind the counter, who flitted around to her scattered patrons with rare vigor . “Perigees ago, she got into some mix-up with a tealblood and some C-I-P -- cerulean, yeah. She put up a good fight.”

Feferi was silent for a while, excuse the occasional hiccups. “Come on, what ith it”, he sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter -- I don’t need your pity.” A wry expression, something akin of amusement.

“Let’s tell some more stories, then?”

“Nah, why don’t we just sit here in this shady-ass bar and sprout hoofbeast manure out of our ignorance shafts about how miserable both our lives are?”

“You, not me. You’re just an unbelievably crotchety guy. You just have to complain on and on, don’t you? Honestly, how. How did you even manage a flushed ‘lationship?”

“I’m not surprised you’ve never had one, the unbelievable shit-stain you are.” Feferi leaned back in her seat and laughed to herself.

“Tell you what. Flushed. A deal,” she laughed. Sollux grinned.

“I’ll swear it on the name of the blueblood who killed my last matesprit.”

“And I’ll swear it on the name of my freak of a moirail!” Her twittering giggles layered over his raspy laugh in a loud, cacophonous bliss.

 

At night she let the fabrics dangle and drop from her limp wrists and neck and drift to the carpeted floor, landing in heaps and twists. A delicate knock stirred her from her calm.

“Fef, I have the incense. ”. She opened the door for Eridan, and he strode in with a tray of bottles and sticks of incense. She waited, her breath even and patient, while he struck a fire, wafting a warm, soporific scent over the room. She sat next to him, on him, almost, drinking the foul liquid slowly. His arm wrapped around her comfortingly. The embrace was warm, and the warmth was mutual, but under the sweetness it was sour. She was uncertain and scared, and she looked up behind her at his face and at his unreadable expression, his eyes decorated in glum violet, tinged with sorrow. She straightened her back and placed a hand on his shoulder and kissed him. When she pulled away his stare was deeper than the bottle he brought her. She sighed and curled her head into his shoulder, and he complied with it, adjusting his arm across her back. She didn’t close her eyes, instead stared into his shirt until her eyelids fell, the deep smell of incense numbing her.


End file.
